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The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II. As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure will likely climb for the foreseeable future because the federal government is running historically large annual deficits of nearly 6% of GDP, which add to...

Pedro Sanchez, the current Prime Minister of Spain and Trump's most vocal critic in Europe, has a serious problem: he already leads a minority government held together by a coalition of left-wing parties, and in the coming elections looks headed toward a major defeat. He has been embroiled in questions about his wife's corruption, and was almost forced to resign when the allegations first arose. 🇪🇸 Spanish PM Sanchez’s wife charged with corruptionBegoña Gómez, the wife of Spanish far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has been formally charged with multiple corruption-related offenses, including influence peddling, business corruption, embezzlement, and… pic.twitter.com/n04JCTaMZl— Visegrád...

President Trump refused to apologize Monday to Pope Leo XIV amid their public fight over the US-Iran war, claiming the leader of the Roman Catholic Church “said things that are wrong.” “He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran, and you cannot have a nuclear Iran — Pope Leo would not be happy with the result,” Trump said. “Iran wants to be a nuclear nation so they can exterminate the world. Not gonna happen.”Trump also accused the pontiff of being “very weak on crime” during an impromptu press availability outside the Oval Office at the White...

Reporter: Did you post that picture of yourself depicted as Jesus Christ? Trump: It wasn't a depiction. I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor. And had to do with red cross as a red cross worker, which we support and only the fake news could come up with that one.

With all the recent attention on the remarkable price moves in gold and silver, it is surprising that the question of a comprehensive audit of the U.S. government’s gold reserves, a headline issue last year, has been conveniently memory-holed. For a time in early 2025, both President Trump and Elon Musk, in his semi-official capacity as head of DOGE (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), were vocal advocates of a comprehensive accounting of U.S. gold reserves. President Trump announced plans to audit Fort Knox. Musk offered to video it. But then something happened. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave the public...

Senate Democrats are "holding the government hostage" over their political "tantrum" about President Donald Trump being in the White House, and are bowing to their party's "socialist wing" to keep the shutdown going, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on Newsmax Thursday. "There's already a lot of problems that Democrats have caused by shutting the government down," the Louisiana Republican told Newsmax's "Wake Up America," while noting that federal employees, including members of the military, have been working without full pay.

Barack Obama used to be confident America would survive Donald Trump. He’s not so sure anymore. The 44th president can still draw a crowd of thousands or dial Gavin Newsom’s cell phone to strategize about the California governor’s redistricting push. But friends who talk to him say it’s become clear that eight years out of the White House, darkness and anxiety have crept in on Obama’s message of hope and change. After deliberately stepping back during the Biden years — while remaining the party’s biggest fundraiser even then — Obama and his aides are reworking his longstanding strategy of minimizing...

GOP candidates for Tuesday’s elections are trapped between Trump’s demands for fealty and voters who want independence.HAMILTON, N.J. — The most revealing element of next week’s election is that President Donald Trump is all but ensuring defeat for Republicans, and his party is doing next to nothing about it.The mere fact of his election last year handed Democrats a powerful turnout lever in blue-leaning New Jersey and Virginia, but Trump has further undermined GOP hopes in the two states with his conduct and has seemingly abandoned California Republicans.There are his explicit actions: The DOGE layoffs and government shutdown reductions-in-force hit...

Democrats on Capitol Hill are fuming after ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and are accusing Republicans of backing censorship and trampling on the First Amendment.

"Massie and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) previously joined forces with Ro Khanna on a discharge petition aimed at compelling a full House vote on releasing classified Jeffrey Epstein files. Khanna said that 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans have signed onto the petition."

Over the Labor Day weekend, more than 50 people were shot, and seven were killed in Chicago. It's as bad as it gets, and for a blue city in a blue state, it's not surprising.Chicago is also one of the cities that has vehemently opposed President Trump's plan to crack down on crime. Mayor Brandon Johnson called jailing criminals racist and immoral and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker claimed Trump's plan is to really 'interfere' with the 2026 elections. A Democratic councilman in Chicago broke ranks with his party and said Johnson should take Trump up on the offer (don't hold...

President Trump went on a late-night attack against NBC and ABC News on Sunday, deriding them for what, in his view, was "biased" coverage and said he would be in favor of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoking their licenses. The Republican president said the news outlets had given him negative coverage on "97%" of stories. It wasn’t clear from where Trump was citing the "97%" figure. A study released earlier this year by the conservative media watchdog group, Media Research Center (MRC), found that coverage of the president’s first 100 days in office was "92% negative." "IF THAT IS...

Friday’s Bolton raid and the rebuke of Trump’s $500M fine show what happens when justice is not impartial.If you are a liberal alarmed by the Friday raid on the home of former national security adviser John Bolton, well, you should be. It’s possible that if charges come out, we’ll learn that Bolton committed a security breach that would have been prosecuted under any president. But there are reasons to suspect otherwise, given that President Donald Trump and FBI director Kash Patel have endorsed lawfare against their political enemies, including Bolton.This is a crisis for American democracy, because even if charges...

The headline to Tuesday’s screed in Variety by Michael Schneider, the Hollywood-based entertainment mag’s executive editor for TV, was as subtle as a Michael Bay movie: “As Fascism Takes Hold in the U.S.,How Will — and Should — the TV Landscape Depict Our Real-Life Horrors?” Schneider railed against living in a world “where our rights are continually under attack, our speech threatened, our healthcare slashed, our standing on the world stage destroyed, a secret police in ICE now roaming the streets and violently arresting people without just cause, military forces are being moved into our cities because they don’t support...

It’s possible Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to “federalize” law enforcement in Washington, D.C., was just a one-off power grab, reflecting the federal government’s unique control of the capital city and Trump’s own obsession with Washington as a symbol of the American greatness he claims to be restoring. In other words, maybe he took over D.C. because he could. But the exotic and rather fascistic appearance of National Guard units on the streets of Washington absent a riot or some other historically relevant pretext makes you wonder if the 47th president has something far worse in store. Here are some possibilities...

President Trump was spotted strolling along a roof at the White House on Tuesday morning — and jokingly told reporters he was planning to install “nuclear missiles” there. The president at first claimed he was “just talking a little walk” — before saying he was looking to put “nuclear missiles” there and chuckling and moving his hand to mimic a projectile.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently shook up his communications team, and now the outspoken Democrat is turning many of Donald Trump's brash political tactics against the president himself. Newsom and his team have used online trolling, meme wars, mocking TikTok videos, insults such as "****," and even a lawsuit against a media company — in this case, one accusing Fox News of misleading reporting — to create an edgy resistance.

As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say. Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather. Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The leader of the free world was sporting a new look this morning, as witnesses noticed that President Donald Trump's skin had returned to normal human color just one day after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began phasing out artificial dyes. The president's hue marked a drastic change from the standard orange-tinted tone he had become known for, with experts speculating that RFK Jr.'s ban on synthetic dyes resulted in Trump's skin reverting back to a far more natural shade commonly associated with human beings. "He's a cleaner, far less-toxic Trump," said one White House...

CPH:DOX, the internationally-renowned nonfiction film festival in Copenhagen, is confronting a dramatically altered geopolitical order, one that threatens the values of freedom of expression upon which the documentary field is founded. The theme of this year's festival, decided several months ago, centers on "the state of human rights, civil liberties, and the international rule of law," festival artistic director Niklas Engstrøm tells Deadline. "We thought it would be very, very timely. I think it became even more timely than we had prepared ourselves for with what is happening right now with the U.S. [Trump] administration de facto trying to change...